


Convolution Theory

by TheFlashFic



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Minor Barry Allen/Iris West, The Barrisco is at pre-slash levels, also featuring harry and jesse and joe and caitlin and the real jay garrick, and if you detect the possibility of Barriscowest you ain't crazy, cisco saves the worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6151225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFlashFic/pseuds/TheFlashFic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco needs his chosen family to be safe. If that means he has to suck it up and save the world, so be it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set immediately after 2x15. Long live King Shark. 
> 
> For anyone unfamiliar with the comics, Cisco's ability to see rifts between dimensions, as well as his inability to show up on film, are taken straight from New 52. 
> 
> I have absolutely no doubt that the Jay/Jay/Zoom/Hunter theories are going to be jossed to hell and back, but for now I like 'em.

Barry tells them that they’re going to stop Zoom, no matter what. Despite his determination, he’s devastated. It shows all over him, from the waver in his voice to the heft of his narrow shoulders under all the weight he’s carrying around. 

They’re all devastated. Caitlin, occasional slightly-tacky pranks aside, is still in an icy fog most of the time. Harry has a traumatized daughter to tend to, and Jesse’s just lost her entire life to come to another world. Joe and Iris had their home torn up, and they’re scared over Barry, it’s obvious. Jay is dead, one more hand through one more chest, and gone where they can’t follow. 

But it’s Barry who hurts the most. Barry, who takes on all the guilt he’s capable of dealing with and then more on top of that. Who feels every loss so strongly, whose confidence suffers blow after blow. But he carries on, leads every charge he can, because he thinks he has to. 

They’ve been trying to go on with their lives, to wait for time to heal or whatever, but it’s not working. 

It’s too much. That’s what it is. It’s all too much. This chosen family is down and hurt and needs help, that’s obvious.

The meeting breaks apart with a lot of motivated people and absolutely no plans how to get anything done. 

But that’s okay. 

Cisco’s always been good at coming up with his own plans. 

 

* * *

 

He makes a list. Five items, short and sweet. 

The first one he can cross right off, since he keeps extras around the lab and at the CCPD. 

The second one he needs to build, but just like last time it doesn’t take more than about ten hours to build it. It takes a couple more hours to tweak some of the settings, but it’s still finished in less than one day, start to finish.

Two down, three to go. 

The glasses take a lot more work. He’s coming at this without a lot of experience and with no clue what exactly inside of his evil twin the things were built to stimulate. But he docks up the two pairs - his originals and the ones he took off Reverb. He scans and opens them both up, he processes the data feeds and looks carefully at the exact frequencies where they’re both set to resonate.

He does a lot of math.

 

* * *

 

It takes a few days, blueprinting and then designing the alterations to each pair of glasses.

There’s more than a few times where he wants to ask Harry for his advice, but he always catches himself. Harry has a hurt daughter and a new life to sort out. Besides, now that Jesse’s here Harry doesn’t come barging into Cisco’s workroom anymore. He’s nested in an empty one, one big enough for both Wellses to work out of. 

Suits Cisco. He likes his own music. 

Barry comes by and asks what he’s working on. Cisco shows off the two pairs of goggles and talks about what he can learn studying the frequencies of Earth Two and--

Barry heads out again, feet dragging, asking Cisco to tell him if he has any breakthroughs. 

Cisco wants to tell him. He wants to go over his entire horrible, doomed-to-fail plan, because Barry will tell him not to do it. Barry will shake his head and smile over Cisco’s determination, then clap him on the shoulder and tell him to come join everyone so they can come up with something more likely to work. 

But he doesn’t. He lets Barry leave. 

Barry Allen, of all people, is not going to be put in the middle of this. Cisco’s entire chosen family is hurting, but Barry more than any of them deserves a break. If Cisco tells him about any of this he’s going to insist on being involved, if he doesn’t stop the whole thing from the start. And that’s the whole point of this: to give Barry a break. To  _ help  _ him, in a way Cisco normally doesn’t try to help. 

If Cisco’s desire to spare Barry comes a little too much from that place in his gut that gets all fluttery when Barry smiles his way, that’s for Cisco to deal with. On his own, the way he has from the start. 

Barry does too much already. It’s time for other people to shoulder some of the load. That’s all there is to it. 

 

* * *

 

Cisco works. It’s what he’s best at. 

He doesn’t sleep enough, but hey, if he wanted to be bombarded by horrible memories he could just stop focusing on his work for ten seconds and they’d wash right over him. 

Caitlin checks up on him a couple of times, which is thoughtful. She’s busy with Velocity 9, working out kinks and finding binding agents that will make it last longer. Apparently Harry and Jesse are helping her.

No idea what they need it for without Jay, but it gives them something to focus on. Cisco waves off her invitation to come help, since biochem really isn’t his area. 

Harry checks on him one day, which is unexpected. He seems as surprised by it as Cisco is. He regards the boards where Cisco’s been doing his equations, and looks at the glasses and the diagrams. If he can tell what Cisco’s trying for, if he can sniff out the entire plan, he doesn’t say. 

“It’s been quiet the last few days,” is all he says when Cisco asks him what’s up. “I’m having to readjust after previously adjusting to your obnoxious level of noise.” He says that last word with some measure of disgust. 

But Cisco’s always been good at seeing through people’s words to their meanings. It’s one reason he’s generally a very forgiving person. Harry’s saying that he misses working with him. And that’s so flattering that it’s hard to resist following him when he goes, or calling him back and going over some of his equations for a second opinion. 

It’s against Cisco’s nature to work alone for so long. But he’s close, and he doesn’t want to be stopped, so he lets Harry go with a vague threat-slash-promise to annoy him all he wants once he’s done there.

 

* * *

 

Finally, he finalizes his equations for the goggles. Before he grabs a magnifying visor and gets down to the dirt of rewiring the tiny circuit boards in the glasses, he plugs Earth Two’s frequency in to Stein’s matrix to run a scan of Central City. Before, with the first breaches, they had looked for actual exotic matter. But the open breaches are all closed. Still, he’s got a hypothesis, and his entire plan is based around it being right. 

It’s with some apprehension that he sets the scan running, and he distracts himself with circuitry until it beeps as finished.

He was right. He looks at the lit-up scan and breathes out a mixture of relief and growing apprehension.

Nothing else to do, then. Onward and upward or whatever. 

He gets back to the glasses, and finishes them up surprisingly quickly given how his hands have started shaking. 

So that’s item three off his list, done. Item four has to wait until he leaves.

 

* * *

 

The whole plan is ridiculous. Really, as bad as Barry’s half-cocked spontaneous ‘plans’ tend to be, with the added bonus of being a thousand times more complicated. Each stage of the plan depends mostly on luck and untested science. 

Cisco hasn’t calculated the odds of his success, but they’re low. They’re microscopic. 

Item five, last one on the list, says ‘Get Yourself Killed, Probably’. He’s hoping he doesn’t ever have to cross that one off, but it seems like the most likely outcome. 

 

* * *

 

It’s late, or early, when he realizes he’s ready. It’s an abrupt realization. He sets down the finished Earth Two goggles and looks around for the next thing, and there’s nothing. He’s ready.

As ready as he’s ever gonna get, anyway.

He tells himself he should go sleep, do it fresh in the morning. But between nerves and nightmares, short of heavily medicating himself that ain’t gonna happen. Besides, nighttime gives him hours to get things done before anyone will even know he’s gone. 

So he powers down his computers, puts his gear in a large duffle bag, hefts it over his shoulder, and heads out to the cortex. 

Nobody’s there. It’s a surprise, but then he doesn’t know what time it is. Actually, he’s not sure he knows what day it is, either.

It’s not so late that the lights are off in the new home of the Family Wells, back in the depths of the unused east wing. They’re having some kind of debate, half of it’s in Latin so who the hell knows, but their voices are full and downright cheerful as Cisco approaches and the door slides open automatically. 

Gotta get them a lock if this is gonna be a permanent arrangement. Judging by the way they’ve fixed the place up, complete with art on the side table and throw pillows on the beds, permanent arrangement seems likely.

“Ramon.” They’re eating. Harry throws a napkin down on a plate - Big Belly Burger, of course, Cisco can see the wrappers, but they’ve put it out on dishware - and sits back, regarding him. “Need some help?” 

It’s almost an offer. Cisco smiles in faint surprise, but hefts the bag at his shoulder. “Nah, taking off for the night. Just figured I’d check in before I left.” 

Harry’s brow furrows, but only for a moment. “Bring coffee in the morning. And cronuts. You need to experience cronuts,” he adds to Jesse, smirking like he’s not hooked on them. “This world, they go crazy over the most banal things.” 

Cisco rolls his eyes but resists the urge to defend his home world. “Good night, guys.” 

Jesse waves, Harry smirks. He must do something else as Cisco’s leaving, because he can hear her voice, an admonishing, “Dad!” as the door shuts behind him. 

He grins at the sound. It’s almost comforting to know that Harry Wells is still a jerk whether he’s got loved ones in mortal danger or not. 

 

* * *

 

Caitlin doesn’t answer her door when he knocks. 

There was one point after the initial lab accident when Cisco had a key to her place, but he gave it to Ronnie when he returned and hasn’t presumed to ask for another one. 

He sends her a text and sits against the wall in her hallway. Ten minutes he’ll give her to answer, and then he’s picking the lock.

But she does answer, pretty fast. 

_ At the Steins tonight. Clarissa insisted. Everything okay?  _

He sends her a thumbs-up and a sleepy emoji, and gets up and heads downstairs. Clarissa will take care of her. She knows the same kind of loss, and they’re friends. 

He’s worried about her. But of all his friends, all the lab crew, she’s the one who will most understand. If he dies, if he never comes back and they find the note in his apartment and work out what happened, she’ll get it. More than any of them, she’ll forgive him. 

 

* * *

 

The West house is lit up bright, so he doesn’t feel weird about approaching. His bag’s in the front seat of his car parked on the road, and he has no excuse to be there. But he’s pretty sure they won’t ask him for one. 

Iris answers the door in mid-laugh. There’s noise behind her, talking. She smiles brightly to see Cisco there, but it’s wary. “Hey! Everything okay?” 

“Yeah.” Cisco grins easily. “I just. I don’t know when Barry left the lab tonight, figured I’d make sure he made it home okay.” 

“Oh. Well. He made it, complete with Chicago deep dish for dinner.” She stresses the Chicago part with a grin, but doesn’t outright say that Barry ran to Chicago, so Cisco guesses Wally’s inside. “And there’s plenty. Come on in, get a drink.” 

That’s tough to say no to. 

The West house and the West family exude a warmth, a welcomeness, that Cisco soaks in like a flower in sunlight whenever he can. It feels bright and cozy inside, and there’s more laughter, more quiet words coming from the living room behind Iris. 

A tarp on the roof and half the furniture in the living room gone, but the Wests are the type of family that turn that into a picnic opportunity, not a tragedy. 

Joe West is a friend, a good one. Cisco doesn’t know Iris quite as well, though they met at the station plenty of times after the singularity, and having her around the lab has been...a lot like that feeling when you don’t realize it’s gotten dark around you until someone turns on a light. She is easily as warm as her dad, but she shines even brighter.

Barry loves her, and Cisco understands that so well that he’s not entirely sure he hasn’t got a crush himself. He has to fight the urge to say anything less than casual about how much it means to him that she’s so willing to include him on family nights like this one. 

He shakes his head, though, and takes a step back on the porch. It’s really hard. “I’m good. Been working nonstop for a couple days, I’m pretty sure I’d pass out at the first hint of alcohol.” 

“Very responsible,” she says agreeably. “Though you’re still welcome, passing out included.” 

“Thank you, Iris.” Cisco smiles a little too sincerely, and then feels awkward about it. “But nope, been having visions of my own bed for hours now, so.” 

“Yeah, I know that feeling. Drive safe, okay? No falling asleep at the wheel.” Her tone is light but her eyes search into Cisco intently for a moment. 

He must pass muster, because when he turns to go she shuts the door without an objection. 

The door opens again when he’s almost to his car, and Barry jogs out. “Hey, Cisco! Everything okay?” 

He looks good. Brighter than he has in the lab. Honestly Cisco’s not sure how much time has past while he’s been working. Hours tend to turn into days in the lab. Still, it’s good to see. It’s a needed reminder about why Cisco made his list and why he’s going where he’s going. 

Barry needs to smile more. Barry has Iris, a loving family, and a city to take care of. Someone needs to take care of him.

Cisco meets him near the middle of the quiet street. “Hey. Yeah, it’s all good. Just heading home to crash.” 

“We’re not exactly on your way.” 

Cisco waves a hand before the mild concern in Barry’s eyes can get any more pronounced. “It’s cool, like I told Iris. Had one of those ‘better see for myself’ moments about you getting home okay, that’s all.” 

“A moment?” 

“Not a vibe, dude, just a moment.” 

Barry relaxes at that. “I guess we’re all still a little high-strung.” 

“I guess.” Cisco claps him on the arm, fighting the urge to hug him right there in the street. “See you tomorrow.” 

“You got it.” 

He hesitates as Barry heads back across the street. “Hey, there is one thing.” 

Barry’s back so fast there must be speedforce involvement. “What’s up?” 

Cisco grins. “The Royal Wellses requested cronuts for breakfast. And I’m crashing as long as I possibly can in the morning. Can you…?” 

Barry rolls his eyes. “That’s a less challenging food request than Chicago deep dish, anyway. I got it, dude, no worries.”    
  
“Thanks.” 

Barry studies him, his smile fading in concern that’s too damn quick to take him over these days. “You sure everything’s okay?” 

God, it’s tough. It’s really, really tough not to grab Barry by the arm and drag him to the car, show him what he’s got inside and where he’s going and blather on until Barry knows. It’s tough not to ask him to come with. Or even to just break down and confess his plans and admit that he’s not sure he’s going to survive the night. 

He cares about Barry too much to do any of those things. 

His plan, it’s good for the world. Both worlds. If by some miracle it works, it’s going to make things better for a lot of people. An entire city on Earth Two. 

But it’s  _ for _ Barry. 

Cisco knows that, accepts it. Maybe it makes him a bad person, because he’s pretty sure if Barry wasn’t falling apart at the seams over Zoom then Cisco wouldn’t be taking stupid risks trying to stop him. It’s a kind of selfishness, really.

But doing the right thing for a selfish reason is still doing the right thing. 

Barry doesn’t make it any easier, though. “We’ve been kinda worried about you,” he admits, meeting Cisco’s eyes in open concern. “The last week or so, working alone and everything…” 

Cisco’s brain is shrieking, yelling at his mouth to open. Yelling at Barry to see, to understand somehow, and to stop him. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to go alone against a guy who scares even the bravest of them.

But Cisco just smiles. “Everything’s fine, really. There might be a slight sleep-deprivation situation happening lately, but. I’m hoping to make that a non-issue after tonight.” 

“Oh.” Barry relaxes a little, though the brightness doesn’t come back to his eyes. “In that case, get the hell out of here and go sleep. I’ll tell everybody at the lab that you might wander in late. It’s cool. Just take care of yourself, that’s all we want. We love you, you know?” 

“Yeah.” Cisco draws in a breath, and the shrieking in his brain silences. If he dies, this is what he’s dying for. 

“I love you too,” he says. It’s the one thing he’s absolutely confident about. If it’s too sincere, too directed right at Barry Allen, he can’t help that.

If it is, though, Barry doesn’t seem to notice. He smiles, small and thin-lipped, and claps Cisco’s arm as he turns. 

Cisco watches him cross the street and head back to the house, but then Barry turns and stands there, watching in return. 

Cisco gets back in his car dutifully and heads off safely down the street, fear gone, feeling nothing but more determined. 

 

* * *

 

He texts Dante, since anything more would be uncharacteristic enough to attract attention. All he asks is if Dante’s finally seen TFA yet.

Instead of waiting for a reply he pulls out his tablet and brings up the map he created at the lab. There are tufts of light, little foggy specs over the overlay of the city streets, and he figures out which one’s closest to where he is now. 

Dante answers him as he’s driving, but he waits until he’s parked to read it. 

_ yes jesus get off my back  _

_ i get it you want to rub the latino pilot in my face cuz i gave you crap when you were a kid _

_ you win nerd i guess you can be in the rebel alliance if you want to _

He grins at the screen, sends back a party emoji, and then slips the phone into the glove compartment of his car. 

He’ll take whatever wins he can get. 


	2. Chapter 2

First order of business: deliver cronuts. 

Normally Barry gets a little tetchy about his powers being used for delivery services, but it’s not like Jitters isn’t on his way. It’s only inconvenient this morning because he does actually have to go do his real job for a while, so he might not have shown up at the lab at all until this afternoon. 

Still, after so long spent worrying about Jesse he doesn’t mind spoiling her a bit now that she’s here. She’s a good kid. Frighteningly smart, like her old man.  

He’s feeling optimistic as he moves into the cortex, looking around for signs of life. They’re still a ways from stopping Zoom, of course, but having a new outlook about him, and a new outlook on Barry’s own responsibilities, has done a lot for his mood. 

And last night he made up his mind about one more thing he’s been prevaricating about. 

Cisco stopping by was unexpected, and despite his easy words when he left Barry only felt more worried, not less. But that was enough to convince him: he’s going to sit him down and talk to him, once and for all, no matter how good or bad it might play out. Because this thing with Zoom has taught him at least one thing: indecision can be worse than failure. 

He actually slept well last night, wrapped up in the memory of Cisco looking so intently at him and saying  _ I love you too. _

The chairs behind the main console in the cortex are both lying on their sides on the floor. 

Barry blinks, pulled out of his thoughts when he sees them. That’s...unusual. Unusual is bad. 

He drops the box of cronuts on the console and moves around it, stepping over the first fallen chair to pull up alarm histories. But nothing comes up. Nobody came in or out last night after everyone left. At least no one who didn’t have the codes. 

“Barry.” 

He jumps a little, but it’s just Harry striding in through the door. 

“Uh, hey. You guys have a party last night?” 

“Absolutely. Invited all our friends.” Harry’s voice is dry enough to kill plant life, but he’s smiling faintly. He spots the chairs behind Barry and the smile dims. “You didn’t do that?” 

“Nope."

“Hey, Barry!” Jesse comes in behind her dad, still in her STAR Labs sweatshirt. Barry makes a mental note to dive into the lab funds and get someone to take her shopping. Iris, maybe. Iris would be glad to help her in whatever way she could. Iris would help her in ways Barry can’t even guess at, most likely. 

“Cisco here yet?” 

He points to the box in answer. “Your breakfast.” 

Harry makes a beeline, but passes the box off to Jesse and moves around to Barry’s side. “You think someone was in here last night?” He asks it softly, watching his daughter pluck a cronut from the box and sniff it uncertainly. 

“You didn’t hear anything after everyone left?” 

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I picked that wing to stay in specifically to escape Ramon and his revenge-salsa playlists. We don’t hear much.” 

‘Revenge-salsa’ makes Barry puff out a laugh even as he spots something unusual. He pulls up the stats on an alarm monitor that shouldn’t be on. It’s for one of the pipeline cells. Weird, they haven’t had anyone down there for weeks. 

He starts to shut it off, assuming some mistake or another, but hesitates with his fingers on the keys. 

Frowning, he reaches past Harry and pulls up the camera feeds from the pipeline level on the monitor by Harry.

Shock makes him straighten, makes him pull in a breath even as he gapes at the screen. 

Harry’s reaction is more slow, more deliberate. He leans in closer instead of drawing back.  “Allen…is that…?”

Barry shoots off, the cortex vanishing in a crackling yellow blur. He knows the way from cortex to pipeline blindfolded, and it’s literally less than a second before he’s standing outside the outer containment door. 

There’s no way. For two dozen reasons there’s absolutely no way he saw what he thought he saw. But he saw someone, and the alarm is on and the cell shows occupied, that’s enough to get him down there. 

The containment door lifts open slowly. The cell in question has been left right at corridor level. After his lightning-fast run down Barry is hesitant to approach. 

The body laying on the floor of the cell wrapped in black sure as hell looks like Zoom, though. 

He can see the suit moving up and down, so he’s alive. Asleep, maybe? 

Is Zoom _asleep_ in his pipeline?

Barry clears his throat. No movement. He checks the cell door just to be sure. It’s closed tight and locked. 

He leans against the transparent plastic of the cell door, feeling the hum of the power-dampening transient pulses that Cisco’s rigged through the doors and walls to keep their metas from phasing or leaking or bursting through the cells. 

It looks like Zoom’s suit, though without him awake and threading it through with speedforce it seems...less remarkable. A little less otherworldly. Zoom seems a lot leaner and less horrifying flopped on his side the way he is.

He hesitates, lifting his hand off the glass and rolling it into a fist to knock, though he’s not entirely sure he wants this person conscious before he knows what’s actually going on. 

Before he can decide there are footsteps behind him, Harry and Jesse finally making it down the slow way. 

Barry backs up from the cell door as they hurry in and join him. 

Jesse, who is still a little nervous about life in general after her capture, actually strides right up past Barry and splays her hand on the plastic, peering in. 

“How?” is all Harry asks as he reaches Barry’s side. 

“Um.” There’s no answer to that. 

Barry has no frigging idea how. 

 

* * *

 

He calls Joe first. “Hey, you didn’t happen to capture Zoom last night without telling me, did you?” 

“Did you sleep-dial me, Bar?” 

“Nope. I’m wide awake, and he’s here.” 

“Who...Zoom is there? At the lab? Zoom, who’s in a different world that we can’t access because we closed all the doors?” 

“That’s the guy. That or someone in a really authentic cosplay wandered in and locked himself up.” 

“Jesus.” There’s the sound of movements from Joe’s end. “I’m on my way.” 

Barry hangs up. He calls Caitlin. 

“Morning. I just got here, everything okay?” 

“Nope. I mean...yes? Check your monitors.” He peers up at the cameras around the cell and the containment door and waves weakly. 

Her gasp is small and unsure. “Barry. Is that…?” 

“So this wasn’t your doing?” 

“I. What? No! I spent last night cross-stitching dirty words on handkerchiefs with Clarissa.” 

“You...never mind. I’m gonna call Cisco, he’s the only one I haven’t asked yet. Can you--” 

“I’ll pull up the camera feeds through this morning and see what happened.” 

“Good. We’ll be right up.” 

He hangs up. Cisco’s right below Caitlin in his contacts, but before he can push the button Jesse sucks in a breath and steps back from the cell wall. 

Barry lowers the phone and moves in. 

Zoom is moving, rolling onto his side in a creak of leather. His eyes open, and he looks around. For a moment he seems confused. Then there’s a pulse of blue lightning and Zoom’s standing at the glass, still as a statue, peering out at them with any expression hidden by the mask. 

Barry swallows but stares back at him. That flash of speed and lightning confirms it beyond a doubt. This is the man himself, the monster, the terror. Conveniently locked up and harmless. 

He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it when he has no idea what he might say. Can’t gloat about Zoom being locked up when he doesn’t have the first idea how it’s even possible. 

As confused as Barry is, though, he’s also not going to flat-out ask Zoom how the hell he got here. He’s got  _ some  _ pride. 

“Barry?” Caitlin’s voice comes in through the overhead comm. “I think I’ve got something.” 

He locks eyes with Zoom for a cold moment, then backs up and lays a hand on Jesse’s tense arm. “Come on, let’s get some answers.” 

 

* * *

 

“I’ve found the moments when they put him in the cell,” she says as Barry and the Wells family storm back in, thrumming with nervous excitement now that they know Zoom is Zoom.

“They who?” 

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Come look.” 

The footage is crisp and sharp - STAR’s cameras are top of the line. The dark pipeline is laid out in sharp lines, and when the door opens the lights come on and paint everything in vivid brightness. The lines of Zoom’s suit, the haggard way he seems to be stumbling, those are all perfectly clear. 

There seem to be two men leading him in. Two figures, anyway. One of them is sharp and clear and utterly unfamiliar, tall and blond and almost Jayish but broader at the shoulders and squarer-jawed. Barry’s sure he’s never seen him before. But whoever the second person is holding him up and leading him along is very much not clear. That person is a vivid patch of fuzzy light, like an overexposure in camera film but...moving. Whoever that blur is works the controls easily, gets the cell brought down from one of the top rows. 

Both of them haul Zoom to the open cell and dump him in it unceremoniously. The cell shuts, the man and the blur stay where they are for a few seconds, then they head back through the door slowly. The door shuts, the lights dim back to where they were. 

“I’m working on the outside security feeds,” Caitlin says after the footage goes dark. 

“Maybe some kind of EMP-projecting metahuman,” Harry says thoughtfully, staring down at the now-still screen. “That could explain the cameras, and how they got through the doors...” 

“No, EMPs would have set off the alarms.” Caitlin and Barry exchange frowns. “Unless his pulses are mild enough to just affect recording and not...I mean, Cisco programmed it so that any loss of power to the door controls, however temporary, would--”

“Cisco!” Barry remembers his phone and hurriedly calls him. 

There’s no answer, just a few rings and then Cisco’s ridiculous novelty voicemail message.

Barry hangs up and frowns over at Caitlin. “Have you heard from him?” 

“Not since last night.”

“He told me he wanted to sleep in this morning.” Barry frowns at his phone and calls him again. 

There’s silence around him, three serious faces watching Barry as he listens to the phone ring in his ear and then Cisco’s  [ weird 80s robot voicemail tune ](http://www.sweetthunder.com/tapefindings/week5/radioshack21st.mp3) . 

He leaves a message this time. “Dude, call me.” 

 

* * *

 

The whole thing is surreal, so much that Barry isn’t sure how to feel. Zoom is their prisoner. They should be thrilled and relieved and throwing a party. But without explanations that make sense maybe the whole thing is a trick, like Hartley Rathaway when he got himself caught in order to access STAR’s computers. 

He and Caitlin go through security footage, but it doesn’t reveal much. They can see where Zoom and his ‘captors’ came into the Lab, but it’s a pretty visible side door that anyone might have hacked through. They can follow them down through the cortex into the pipeline (and watch the moment when the blurry form seemed to stumble and Zoom tried to yank free and a quick tussle resulted in the chairs behind the console being overturned and then ignored) but it’s all the exact same. Strange tall man and blurry mass of light. 

Harry and Jesse talk over theories as they go through half a box of cronuts, and they keep the live camera on Zoom’s cell displaying on one of the monitors on the wall so they’ll know the instant anything happens. 

It feels calm enough, but the moment they hear voices in the outside corridor leading into the cortex the air seems to grow thin, and everyone tenses. Harry puts himself between Jesse and the door. 

The first person to come into view is that same tall blond stranger from the footage, and with him is Joe West and--

“Cisco!” Caitlin pushes past Barry and runs to the door. “What happened?”

“I’m okay.” Cisco grins at her, but he’s a little gray-looking. Which fits - he’s got an arm in a sling and some bruising on his face, and Joe’s helping to hold him up. 

None of this makes Barry feel any less surreal, but something in his chest definitely unclenches to see Cisco. He moves to them more slowly, letting Caitlin look him over first. 

“I called you,” he says stupidly when Cisco’s overbright brown eyes land on him. 

“Sorry, dude, battery’s dead. It’s been a loooong night.” 

“Is this your doing?” Harry asks, gesturing back at the display where Zoom is sitting - dramatically still - in the cell. 

Cisco looks over and beams. “Hey, yeah! Aw, does he look sad? He looks sad to me.” 

“Okay, wait a minute.” Caitlin shoots a hard look at Harry. “Let me look you over before anyone asks anymore questions.”    


“I’m okay, promise. I’ve been in the ER for like hours. I just. Could use a chair.” 

Barry streaks to the console and streaks over to the door with one of the chairs, setting it against the wall and helping Joe ease Cisco into it. 

He sighs, deep and relieved, and his grin is a little bit loopy. He gestures over to the stranger. “Introduction time! Joe, Caitlin, Harry, this is Jay Garrick. Jay, this is Joe, Caitlin, Harry. You already know Barry and Jesse, yeah?” 

“Wait, what?” 

“Jay Garrick? What do you mean--”

“How exactly does this man know my daug--”

The blond stranger holds up a hand to stop the wave of responses. He smiles faintly. “Apologies. Cisco is on pain medication, otherwise I think he would have done this a little more carefully.” His voice is strong, low, and his gaze is clear as he approaches Barry and stretches his hand out. “Jay. It’s nice to formally meet you.” 

Barry gapes at him, but takes the offered hand and shakes. “Barry. I-I’m sorry, did we informally meet?” 

Jay’s smile goes crooked and he reaches up and wraps on the wall. Tap tap tap. Tap. Tap tap.

“Oh my god.” Jesse moves around her dad, her eyes wide and suddenly wet. “Oh my god, it’s you.” 

Jay turns a smile on her, looking openly fond. “I’m  _ very _ glad to meet you finally.” 

She throws herself at him, dodging Harry’s grasp and all but leaping into his arms. Jay catches her and hauls her up into a tight hug. 

The man in the mask. 

Barry’s clear on that part, of course, but there’s still way too much that doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t have the heart to cut into their reunion, though, mostly because Jesse - who has been nothing but strong so far - is shaking with tears, and Jay doesn’t seem unaffected. 

Harry approaches them and stands close, regarding Jay warily, but he doesn’t try to break them up either. 

“I’m sorry,” she says against his chest, voice thick with tears. “I’m so sorry we left you there.” 

“No, Jesse. I was thrilled you got out. Both of you.” Jay looks over her head at Barry and nods firmly. “I had hope when you left. That’s more than I had for quite a while.” 

“I hate to cut this short,” Joe says from Cisco’s side. “But can we get back to the Jay Garrick part?” 

Cisco nods, face twisting a little like he’s doing his best to look solemn. “This is him. The real one.”

They all look to Jay. 

Jay sets Jesse back on her feet, but his arm stays around her comfortingly. “Zoom captured me quite a long time ago. The man that you knew as Jay, I’m sorry to tell you, was an imposter. I’m not sure what his real name was, but--” 

“Hunter.” 

Barry looks over in surprise. 

Caitlin’s eyes are locked on Jay, but glassy. Stunned. She swallows. “Hunter Zolomon. He all but confessed it to me, I just didn’t realize it at the time.” 

Barry goes to her and takes hold of her arm, feeling her shake with little tremors. 

“Hunter, then,” Jay says easily. “Hunter was a man of science, recruited by Zoom. I thought, and this Hunter thought too, that he was selected simply because he looked so much like me. I had been in the papers, but I didn’t allow my photo to be taken. They only had a general idea of my appearance.” 

He releases Jesse, looking around the cortex absently as he speaks. “There’s parts that I don’t know. They spoke of a good deal of this in front of my cage, but I’m sure I only have half the story. I know that Zoom had access to some formula he stole from a lab that gave this Hunter bursts of speed like mine. At first he simply took my place so people wouldn’t realize that I was gone. But Zoom wanted more from him, kept trying to find ways to inject him with more speed faster, tried to find ways to steal my speed and give it to him. This caused some tension, and then, months ago, Hunter simply vanished.” 

“That must have been when he came through the breach to our world,” Barry guesses. 

Around him the room is tense, the possibility of yet another betrayal hitting all of them hard.

Jay looks around at them as if he senses it. “From what I understand, the Hunter you all knew was sincere in his desire to be a hero. Zoom put him to work being me, and that was what he wanted to do. Not assist Zoom, but be a hero. I don’t think he was a bad person. At least not yet.” 

Barry frowns over at Harry, wondering how he's taking all this.

He's tense, staring holes at the man calling himself Jay Garrick. “I always wondered why after months of being anonymous the mysterious Flash suddenly started giving interviews and letting his picture be taken, showing up at press conferences…” Despite his words his gaze is still wary. 

Barry considers that. “It also explains why he ran away from here as soon as he knew we would be taking Zoom on. He didn’t want Zoom to find him and take him back.” 

“What does ‘not yet’ mean?” Joe asks, his curiosity less paranoid than theirs. “You said he wasn’t a bad person _ yet _ .” 

Jay seems to brace himself. “Zoom and this other Jay, Hunter Zolomon...are the same person.” 

“Damn it, I  _ knew _ it’d be something crazy like that.” Joe slouches a little, leaning on Cisco’s chair. 

Cisco giggles, patting his arm consolingly with his good hand.

“I only came to discover that recently, when Zoom removed his mask in my view. This may sound absurd,” Jay says, peering around at everyone solemnly, “but I’ve got a theory that Zoom somehow traveled through time itself.” 

“Absurd,” Cisco agrees from his chair.

“His speed obsession, I don’t understand it and I’ve seen nothing like it before. I didn’t understand why, if he was so obsessed personally, he was giving speed to someone else instead. Now I believe he was attempting to give his past self more speed than he initially started with.” 

“I wouldn’t call Jay - the Jay we knew - obsessed with it, exactly,” Caitlin says, still pale but more focused. “But I could see where it would have gone that way. He seemed to be fighting it, but the signs were there.” 

“Zoom was creating himself. And it was backfiring. But then his past self - Hunter, sorry - vanished, and Zoom became all the more unhinged.” 

Jay falls silent, and everyone else seems to follow his lead. 

It's a lot to take in. Barry - and Harry, no doubt - tries to go through everything he knows about Jay, about Zoom, about the man they knew as Jay, trying to find places where the story doesn’t add up. But the only holes he can find are things he only knows because the imposter Jay told him, not because he has any proof. 

Jay came to them voluntarily. Helped them. Taught Barry aspects of his powers he hadn’t thought about before. Gotten close to Caitlin. Saved people. If he was an imposter, he at least had good intentions. If he was Zoom’s past, then…

Barry doesn’t know what to make of that. 

He gives up, studying this new Jay. He looks honest enough, but so did the other one. If he truly is the man in the mask, though, he's been Zoom’s prisoner even longer than Jesse was. 

And that seems possible. This Jay is clean but utterly washed-out, like he hasn’t seen sun in a long, long time. His shoulders are broad but he's rail thin, giving him the look of a man who was built to hold much more weight. He seems self-possessed, unshaken, but Barry's worn that sort of costume before. He knows that appearing to be unaffected sure as hell doesn’t mean he _is_ unaffected. 

And it makes sense. 

Barry lost his speed once, when Blackout sucked it out of him. Caitlin told him at the time that his speed was an alteration to his very DNA, and his cells still showed signs of it when he couldn’t access it. But Jay had absolutely no trace of the speedforce in his body. They assumed it was because Zoom had found some way to eradicate it. 

It makes more sense, though, if he had simply never been a genetic speedster in the first place. Besides, if Zoom knows how to steal speed so thoroughly, then why would he have to recruit Harry to steal Barry’s?

It's too much. Too much for a Thursday morning. 

 

* * *

 

It's a strong sign of the validity of his story that Harry lets New Jay and Jesse talk alone together. Still in the cortex, but out of his immediate reach, and that says enough. 

Caitlin drags Cisco to the medical bay despite his protests, leaving Barry, Joe, and Harry to conference about everything. 

“It clears up a lot of questions I’ve had,” Harry admits, watching Jay and his daughter carefully. “I couldn’t reconcile the Flash I first came to know on my world with the one who refused to go after Zoom. Flash was never a coward until his face was known.”

“He said Zoom stole a speed formula from a lab. Was that your early Velocity?”

“Possibly. I never had any come up missing, but I had a few promising batches that went completely dormant. He could have taken some and corrupted the rest, put in additives to make up for lost volume and ruined it.” Harry frowns. “I should have spotted that. I never do enough follow-up research on my failures.” 

“Seems to me there’s one good way to clear this all up,” Joe says. He nods over their heads at the monitor. “You’ve got the man himself locked up.” 

Barry and Harry turn and regard the feed. Zoom is sitting in the exact same place, and Barry can’t help but wonder at the sheer patience the man must have, staying stock still in that creepy, creepy way. 

“Did we ever figure out how that happened, by the way?” 

Barry and Harry look at each other before glancing back at Joe. 

Harry turns on his heel and heads for the door.

 

* * *

 

“Good news,” Cisco calls when Harry and Barry stride in. “Caitlin says the ER didn’t maliciously lie to me about my injuries!” 

Caitlin makes a face at him as she unhooks the blood pressure cuff from his arm. “Forgive me for being worried.” 

Harry ignores the chatter, as usual, as he approaches the bed Cisco’s reclined on. He folds his arms across his chest. “The breaches were closed. Irreversibly closed.” 

“Yup.” 

Harry stares at him. 

Cisco beams up at him, bruised face and all. 

Barry approaches Caitlin, touching her arm carefully. “You doing okay?” 

She shrugs, winding up the cuff. “I’m not thinking about things. Maybe it’ll be easier dealing with his death now. Since it turns out I never really knew him at all.” 

He doubts it, but he lets her have it. “You need anything?” 

She steps away from him and shelves the cuff. With her back turned she draws in a breath and lets it out. “Maybe another nap.” 

He doesn’t stop her when she goes, just sighs and looks at Harry. He and Cisco are still having a staring contest. 

Barry rolls his eyes. “Just  _ ask _ him already.” 

Harry heaves a sigh loud enough to carry. “Ramon.  _ How _ did you get Zoom here if the breaches were all closed?” 

“Oh man, I’m glad you asked because it’s kinda neat? I think so, anyway.” He wriggles to sit up. “Did you guys see the note I left? Wait, did I leave a note? After we dropped him off I wrote out a note. I think?” 

Harry sends Barry a long-suffering look. 

Barry just shrugs. Zoom is apparently caught, it’s not like there’s any dangers that need running to right now. Besides, he secretly likes the idea of Cisco milking this. He doesn’t get many wins against Harry. 

“We didn’t find any notes, dude,” he says, sending Cisco an indulgent smile. 

“Just as well, I was loopy and tired, probably would’ve read a lot like those class notes I used to--” 

“Ramon!” 

“Right, sorry.” Cisco draws in a breath, shakes his head as if to clear some of the drug fog, and starts talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it was vitally important that I include the link to Cisco's kitschy-ass voicemail message.


	3. Chapter 3

_ you win nerd i guess you can be in the rebel alliance if you want to _

Cisco grins at the screen, sends back a party emoji, and then slips the phone into the glove compartment of his car. 

He’ll take whatever wins he can get. 

He climbs out of the car, hefts the heavy duffle bag over his shoulder, and carries his tablet with him. The patch of light he’s here to find is invisible to the naked eye, of course, but the tablet pinpoints it in the middle of a cracked old parking lot full of weeds. It’s on the side of a small one-story brick building that hasn’t seen a sign of life in probably years. 

He compares the tablet to the lot itself, gets as close as he can to the light he’s looking for, and shoved the tablet in his bag. He pulls out a pair of taken-apart-and-rebuilt goggles and slides them on. 

Reverb’s goggles weren’t only set to stimulate vibes. Which makes sense, because he seemed to be way more fond of a completely different power he had. The goggles don’t block out the world around him at all. And when Cisco looks through them, programmed as they are to find and respond to anything vibrating at the very specific resonance of Earth Two, they light up a crack in the air right in front of him. 

He got the idea from thinking back to how they initially found the breaches. Martin Stein helped him, coming up with a plan to search the city for traces of exotic matter. So what they found, and what they closed, were wide-open breaches that were leaking out trace elements of Earth Two.

But the rift between their worlds that Barry had opened, it hadn’t just left behind those wide open leaks. There are other so-far-undetected places where the border between worlds impacted, just not as badly.

_ (“Get to the point,” Harry says, but the snap’s out of his voice and he sounds interested. _

_ “Okay, like. You ever scrape your knee? In some places the skin’s torn open and bleeds all over the place. In way more places it’s just scraped raw, leaving redness and pain but not actually tearing the skin. That singularity was a big ole patch of road rash.”  _

_ “So what we closed were the open wounds.”  _

_ “Right! But there’s plenty of places where the borders were scraped really thin, but not opened entirely. No exotic matter came through, so we never pegged them.”) _

The solution is simple. The frequency of Reverb’s goggles is set to Earth Two’s unique resonance. All Cisco had to do was extrapolate that exact frequency and run a search pattern across Central City. The atmosphere, the air around these thinly-scraped places, shares that resonance, so the map on his tablet lit up in the places where the border is thinnest. 

The goggles are modified to radiate that frequency. Cisco can’t change his own body’s frequencies, that’s some Planck-level physics he is not even messing with, but what he can do is shift the air around him to match Earth-Two’s frequency. 

And with the goggles on, forming a big bubble of Earth Two air around him, he simply has to walk up to the border between worlds and tear it open, step right through. 

_ (“Which, dude, if you and Jesse want to go home? Totally possible. We could do it tonight.”  _

_ “Let’s...table that discussion. Let your ribs heal, we’ll figure Zoom out, and then we’ll talk about it.” _

_ “I knew it. You love us so hard.”) _

Stepping through a rift turns out to be way less dramatic than charging through it in the grip of a speedster. There’s a few seconds of complete blackout, where Cisco forgets how to move but his body has no connections to the universe around it anyway so it’s fine. 

Then he drops a few inches onto the gleaming concrete of a flat rooftop, and the golden, glittering world of Earth Two surrounds him. 

It’s nighttime here too, fortunately, and nobody’s around to watch him drop the duffle bag to the roof and stand like a statue as he lets the goggles work for him the way his own pair was designed to. 

His vibe shows him Zoom in his lair. Pretty much what Cisco planned, and hoped for. Zoom is working on something, studying maps on the wall in an area away from his now-mostly-empty cages. Central City map, Cisco thinks, but he doesn’t study it long enough to figure out if it’s Earth One or Two. 

He doesn’t watch for more than a minute. He slides the goggles off, hikes the bag over his shoulder, and looks around for a stairwell to get down. 

Getting to the edge of the city and finding the path to Zoom’s lair takes up way more time and footwork than Cisco anticipated. Which sucks, because it gives him too much time to think and anticipation is a bitch. He can feel his nerves growing worse the closer to the city edge he gets, and it only gets worse as the roads become suburban and grassy and then there’s a little parking lot and the uninterrupted line of trees. A little sign that says Welcome to Carver Forest Hiking/Campgrounds. And, heaven be praised, there’s a little pamphlet with maps of hiking trails, and a little x in the corner that says Ascension Cliffs (no climbing allowed).

The sound of distant traffic, the rattle of the overhead train system which his own Central City really frigging needs, they all jar him and get his heart beating faster and slick his palms with sweat. But the silence of the woods is worse. Cisco has a tiny flashlight, but the trails are wide and clear and way easier to navigate than the tromp through the woods Killer Frost led them in. 

And then, eventually, after way too much time to think, the cliffs loom over his head. Darker black on black, only the rusted unused mechanics of an old mine system visible in the darkness. 

All Cisco has to do now is get up there. 

_ (“And how exactly did you do that?” _

_ “Suspense, man. I’m withholding details for suspense.”)  _

He’s armed, of course, with Item Two from his to-do list. Maybe Reverb knew how to manipulate his powers to damage speedsters with whatever the hell kind of sonic waves he was shooting out, but Cisco ain’t there yet. He’s gotta do things the old fashioned way. 

When he gets to the top, though, he’s used way more of the fuel supply than he meant to. There’s enough left for a few good blasts, but his nerves are wearing paper-thin as he navigates through the badly-lit mess of Zoom’s lair.

In the end it’s abrupt, the way dealing with speedsters always is. He spots a map on a wall, and a mass of blackness beside it, and it’s time to do this. 

He aims, and his hands are unsteady but when he fires the stream is dead on, coating the back of Zoom’s suit. 

Zoom is strangely slow to react to the surprise. He tries to charge out of the way, but he’s already moving slower. Cisco never loses sight of him, though he goes a little blurry. Cisco just moves the spray of the gun and catches him in the side. 

_ (“What in the hell kind of gun are you even talking about?” _

_“You two have no appreciation for drama._ Wait _for it.”)_

Zoom, with the crackling lightning and the vibrations and the huge and the scary, turns his head and looks at Cisco. 

“You.” That voice is the same horrifying bass echo, and Cisco nearly forgets himself right then and there and goes tearing off to get away. 

Zoom turns on him, moving with some difficulty. “You’re going to regret that.” There’s ice sheeting off his costume as he turns.

_ (“Wait, the  _ cold gun? _ ” _

_ “Ugh. Fine, Barry, yes. The cold gun. A new one, anyway. They’re not exactly hard for me to build, and if you’ll recall its original purpose was to slow down a rogue speedster.”  _

_ “You iced up a ladder to climb with the cold gun?”  _

_ “More a really steep ramp with some really awkward footholds. That thing is not graceful, dude, I need to work on that. I did update it some when I built it, trying for less actual tissue damage and accounting for speedforce now that we know more about it. Totally effective against speed, but less likely to freeze holes in people.”  _

_ “That’s what you were working on the last few days?”  _

_ “Among other things.”) _

Cisco can hardly breathe, gun trembling in his hand as Zoom--

_ (“Okay, wait, should I even ask what a cold gun is, or is it blindingly obvious?”) _

 

* * *

 

Cisco glares at them and heaves a sigh. “Okay, forget it. If I can’t paint this picture the way I want you can just have the summary version: I slowed him down. He is regretfully still really, really fast and big and strong even when he’s not speedstering, so I got thrown around a little bit. But I finally got him slowed enough to hit him with The Boot--” 

“The Boot.” 

He frowns at Harry. “Yeah. Remember The Boot? The thing I built for the CCPD specifically to prevent a meta from accessing their powers? It’s like you guys pay no attention to my work, honestly. It’s hurtful.” 

Harry looks over at Barry with a frown. Barry kind of understands that look - Cisco basically had a speedster-stopping collection of inventions, and none of them thought about using them. That is a legitimate screw-up. 

Cisco sighs. “So yes. I colded him, booted him, and then...you know, kind of whacked him in the head until he stopped trying to get away. I got the prisoners out of the cages - Killer Frost, by the way, is alive and well and considering finding a better class of friends, so yay - and that’s basically it. I had to use some of Zoom’s tools to get Jay’s mask off - which, damn, that thing was sadistic. He couldn’t talk, could barely eat, could hardly see out of the thing. Like being in a deprivation tank for more than a year, I’m really surprised he’s still sane. But he is, lucky for me, because I sure as hell needed his help to move Zoom around.

“Anyway, I used my original goggles to find another gap back to Earth One, and we made it here, took the boot off and dumped Zoom in the cell. Jay was nice enough to help me get to the ER, because Zoom is mean and hurt me, and that’s about it. He kept me company for a few hours and told me about himself, and I told him about our Jay, and then we came back here and now I’m talking to you guys.” 

Barry isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. There’s something bubbling up inside of him, something uncomfortable and stressful. He reaches out, starts to put a hand on Cisco’s shoulder but ends up skimming fingertips against the ring of black around one of his eyes. 

“You could have been killed.” 

Cisco blinks up at him. “Had occurred to me, yeah.” 

“You planned this out over...how long? And you didn’t say anything. You could have been killed and we never would have known…” He sits on the edge of the bed. 

“There’s a letter at my place. I left it in case I was gone so long that someone came to check up on me. But...it wasn’t a big deal.” 

That’s a lie so obvious even Harry seems to see it. He moves around to the other side of the bed and glares down at Cisco. “You  _ should _ have died. You had to know all the things that should have gone wrong.” 

“Yeah.” Cisco’s not grinning anymore, not as bleary. He rubs at a dark patch on his jaw and shifts a little against the bandages wrapped around his chest. “But there was a chance.” 

“You should have told me. Don’t you realize how much easier it would have been if I had been with you?” Barry’s breath is coming faster. He feels like the room is closing in a little around them. 

Cisco’s solemn look sharpens, but he looks away from Barry. “It was a crazy idea. I didn’t even think I’d be able to get to Earth Two at all, why build it up into some big plan?” 

“I can’t believe…” Barry feels dazed. “Zoom was my responsibility, Cisco. I made so many mistakes that made everything worse, it was my mess to clean up.” 

“That’s crap and you know it. Zoom had to be stopped, that’s it.” 

“I owe people! I promised to make things right, I promised I’d get him!”

“You want me to let him out so you can put him back in yourself?” Cisco stares at him incredulously. “I have the same responsibility to you that you think you have to the whole world, okay? You have Joe and Iris and Wally now, and your dad, and this whole city to think about. And don’t pretend you’ve been okay lately, because you haven’t.” 

Barry winces at that. “You did this all by yourself because you thought I couldn’t handle it?” 

“Barry…” Cisco sits up unsteadily. “You know, forget it. Here I figured I’d get a good job, or a thank you, maybe, but no. Whatever, let me go do some more work that everyone can ignore.” He slides his feet to the floor and stands up unsteadily. 

Barry starts to reach for him, but Cisco jerks away hard enough to make him hiss in a breath. 

“Go talk to Jay, Barry. He can tell you a lot more about Zoom than I can. All I did was slow him down.” 

He doesn’t know how to argue with that, and he wants to but he’s vibrating with this deep...rage, this feeling that seems like it’s going to rise up into his throat and suffocate him. He stands there as Cisco drags his feet to the door and through it. 

And man, he knows he’s screwed up when even Harrison Wells looks at him reproachfully. 

He throws up his hands. “What? That was insane, you heard the story. He should have died. It was needless and stupid, going off on his own and doing something like that. How am I supposed to protect people if they don’t--” 

“Allen.” Wells cuts in sharply. “He didn’t want protection. He wanted to fight. And he did.” 

“He shouldn’t have won. It could have gone so wrong. I can’t…”

Harry sighs, looking as inconvenienced as he always looks when other people’s emotions insist on happening around him. “You’re not an idiot. Stop acting like one. Accept the gift your friend just gave all of us.” 

Barry shakes his head, but doesn’t answer. He knows how this is coming across, he knows he sounds ungrateful and childish. But he can’t deny the force of the anger inside of him. 

Harry heads for the door, but hesitates in the doorway. “He didn’t do it because he thought you couldn’t handle it, Barry. He did it so you wouldn’t have to. That’s not the kind of thing you take for granted.” 

 

* * *

 

Despite his minor tantrum, Cisco doesn’t feel all that angry as he trudges to his workroom and starts cleaning up the remnants of his long days of planning and work. 

He’s just worn out.

He can’t remember where his duffle bag is, with the Boot and the cold gun and the goggles inside. He gave it to Jay at some point, hopefully it’s around. He can rebuild every one of them if he has to, even the Reverb goggles thanks to the work he did dissecting and altering them. But they’re bad things to leave lying around. 

It’s strange being back here. There’s no more work to do. there’s not even a Zoom to worry about stopping. Things can go back to normal, dealing with average everyday metahumans and rogues and whatnot. 

It all feels kinda anticlimactic, really. But hey, he’s not dead. That’s a plus. Killer Frost is free to terrorize her city again if she wants. Jay’s alive after all, and Zoom is done. Things will get better now. That’s all he wanted, for things to be better. 

“Smile,” comes a voice from the doorway, and he peers back and blinks as Barry snaps a picture of him with his phone. 

He’s not mad at Barry. Barry feels exactly the way Cisco knew he would feel. So he just raises his eyebrows. “If that’s supposed to be a victory picture for the papers I can pose better.” 

“I don’t think you can, actually.” Barry approaches and holds his phone out. 

Cisco takes it reflexively, and blinks at the wide patch of bright blurriness in the middle of the image. 

“Did you know about that?” Barry asks.

“About your phone being busted?” 

“It’s not the phone, it’s you. The security footage we pulled up was the same way. Jay and Zoom showed up clearly, and you looked like…” He gestures at his phone. 

Cisco shoots a quick selfie, and squints at the blurry nothing that appears on the screen. “Huh.” 

“I don’t know what you did, but your Instagram days might be over.” 

The frequency fields the goggles generated, maybe. He hadn’t even attempted to alter the vibrations of the atoms of his own body, but...maybe it happened after all. Not all the way to Earth Two’s frequencies, since Jay and Zoom and Harry all showed up fine on film. Something in between. 

Might have to run some tests later. Get Caitlin and Harry involved.

“Weird,” he breathes, staring at the photo for another moment before handing the phone back. 

Barry takes it. 

Silence falls. Cisco turns back to his worktable.

“I can’t lose you.” 

He turns back to Barry, blinking suddenly wide eyes. 

Barry fidgets with his phone. “I can’t. The idea that it could have happened last night without me even knowing...I can’t even handle that.” 

Cisco swallows. “It didn’t.” 

“But it could have.” Barry looks up, green eyes bright and earnest. “I get it, we live dangerous lives here and things go wrong. We're going to get hurt, people might die. But there are some people I  _ can’t  _ lose. None of this is worth it if lose the people I love. I’m still messed up from watching Joe die on Earth Two, and he wasn’t even my Joe. If anything ever happened to him, or to _ Iris _ , god. Or to you, Cisco.” 

It feels like Cisco’s forgotten how to breathe. He waits for the rest of the list: Caitlin, Henry, Patty, Felicity, Oliver, whoever. 

But Barry doesn’t say anyone else’s name. 

He lets out a breath instead, rubbing at his face. “I didn’t mean to flip out back there. What you did...I haven’t even come to grips with it yet, it’s...jesus, Cisco. It’s so big. But all I can think about is last night, watching you drive away. How that might have been the last time I ever saw you.” 

Cisco breathes easier without those overbright eyes on him. “I’m not sorry I did it,” he says quietly. 

Barry laughs, a puff of air. “Not even alone?” 

“Especially not alone. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get through, and if I did I didn’t know if I could bring anyone with me. Or if the gun would work, or the Boot, on Earth Two. I didn’t know if he’d kill me before I even knew he was there, or…” 

Barry lets out a soft noise, pained, and approaches. He pulls Cisco to him, arms folding around his shoulders carefully, and then more tightly when it doesn’t hurt Cisco’s injuries. “Thank you.” 

He can’t relax right away, though. “It’s not that I thought you couldn’t handle it, Barry, I swear, I just…”

“Thought I shouldn’t have to,” Barry finishes.

“Yeah.” Cisco sags against him at that, burying his face against Barry’s shoulder. “Something like that.” 

“Thank you,” Barry says again, the words a warm puff of air against Cisco’s hair. “If you ever do anything like that again, though…” 

Cisco laughs. He readies himself to draw back, but Barry doesn’t let go. Doesn’t even loosen his grip. So he shuts his eyes and folds his good arm around Barry, letting himself luxuriate in it for as long as it lasts. 

It’s this, he knows, that makes it all worth it. The danger, the apparent loss of his selfie game, the occasionally being overlooked by a team that thinks everything has to be fought with speed alone so doesn't consider other options. Facing down Zoom, opening dimensional portals with untested science. Loving a guy whose love for a particular, radiant girl is such a huge part of him that it literally makes him who he is. All worth it. 

He thinks about waking up after a bee sting and Barry calling him a hero. He thinks about Reverb on Earth Two telling him he could be a god. He thinks about honorable destinies awaiting him, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need any of those things. He didn’t take Zoom on to be a hero, he didn’t keep those glasses to turn him into a god. 

He wants to be able to care for Barry Allen while Barry Allen cares for the whole world. 

Still, he can’t deny that feeling Barry’s lips press against his hair, feeling the tightness of his grasp, remembering that short list of people Barry can’t lose - Joe, Iris, and  _ him - _ makes him hopeful for something more. 

With Zoom gone and Barry smiling, and everyone safe, there’s time to be hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story idea first came about when I realized that between the boot and the cold gun Cisco really was pretty well equipped to stop a rogue speedster all on his own. I am somewhat less forgiving than Cisco himself is at the fact that this and many of his other possibilities and contributions are so easily overlooked. But there ya go. 
> 
> [My tumblr](http://fauxsciencedork.tumblr.com/), if you want to bug me about WIPs or whatever.


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